


Losing Castiel

by ashitanoyuki



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Episode: s09e03 I'm No Angel, M/M, Post-Episode: s09e03 I'm No Angel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 01:53:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1410598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashitanoyuki/pseuds/ashitanoyuki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After kicking Cas out of the bunker, Dean does not know what to do with himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Losing Castiel

**Author's Note:**

> So much writer's block with my multi-chaptered stories. Ah well. Have some angst.

He stood, helpless, staring at the empty room. Cas had left—he’d thrown Cas out—at least an hour ago, and still he could not bring himself to move. The image of his best friend staring up at him, stricken, was burned into his mind, a look of despair and misery and betrayal. He’d never scrub that image from his brain. A hundred years, a thousand years, and he would never be able to forget the wordless agony that had lurked undisguised in Castiel’s eyes.

He would burn for this. If everything else could be forgiven, he would still burn for this.

It wasn’t like losing Cas in Purgatory. He had tried, then. It wasn’t his fault Cas had stayed behind, even though he knew if he’d only _tried harder_ Cas would have come with him. And it wasn’t like losing Cas to the leviathan, when he’d at least had the old trench coat to cling to, a reminder, a momento. That brief _(eternal, unending)_ moment when Lucifer had ripped Castiel to shreds, or when Raphael had blasted Cas into smithereens. None of those times had been his fault. Each of those times, he could at least say he had tried his _(pathetic)_ best to save Cas, to keep him there, to hold him close.

But now Cas was gone, and it was all his fault. Cas was gone, and he had thrown him into the cold, to the mercy of the angels and the demons and anything else that wanted a big, juicy slice of former-angel meat.

_(Protect Sammy. You did it to protect Sammy. Protect Sam. Sacrifice Cas.)_

“Dean?” Sam padded into the room, so light, so carefree, so unaware of the unspeakable act Dean had just committed. “Where’s Cas?”

And damn, it would be Sam and his godawful tendency to be understanding that would unleash the floodgates behind Dean’s carefully crafted _(weak, so weak)_ walls. He turned, shameful tears welling up in his eyes, spilling down his cheeks, weakness, liquid weakness. “He left,” he said, his voice cracking _(Daddy’s little_ girl _was never strong enough, always cried)_ as he stumbled over the words. “He left, Sam.”

“Left?” Sam blinked, confused. “Why would he—hey. Dean, come on.”

He didn’t deserve the warm arms, so comforting, so much like home, that wrapped around him. Sam was alive because he’d sent Cas away. Why wasn’t that good enough? “Come on Dean, he had to have left for a reason. This is Cas. He’s probably working on some kind of plan to fix this angel problem right now, you know?”

Dean swallowed hard, struggling to reign in the tears _(as if he could)_. “It’s my fault,” he whispered, clutching at his brother, comfort he didn’t deserve, he didn’t want, but god he needed it, just to feel Sam holding him, alive and well, not dead, not dead _(God, Cas had been killed without them, what if the next time he saw Cas he was nothing more than rotting meat—again?)_ “It’s my fault, Sammy.”

“No it’s not,” Sam assured him, and wasn’t that just like Sam, who didn’t know, who _couldn’t_ know, what Dean had done. “It’s gonna be okay, Dean.”

“He can’t go,” Dean babbled, words spewing from his lips _(weak, such a girl)_ as he shook in his brother’s arms. “He can’t go, because what if he dies again, and I, I, I couldn’t protect him before, and now I really can’t protect him, and he means so much to me Sammy, what am I going to do without him? I—” and he couldn’t say it, he wasn’t that far gone. He was Dean Winchester, weakling, worthless, never ever good enough. He didn’t deserve—that.

“I know, Dean,” Sam said, rubbing soothing circles over his shoulders. “I know you do.”

He didn’t even have the energy to feel shame that Sam knew his secret. “I can’t lose him, Sam.” _(He already had.)_ “It’d be like losing you.”

Sam’s arms tightened around him, grounding him. “You won’t lose him, Dean,” Sam said quietly. “I promise.”


End file.
